Robot Dairy- Month One

--An update on the first 5 weeks at the Robot Dairy--
I can't believe it has been 5 weeks already! It has been quite a ride! While it has been challenging both physically and mentally for our team- but nothing beats walking into the barn at the new dairy! You can just sense that the cows love it there.
The cows have been averaging right around 97lbs of milk per day and milk quality is excellent (SCC under 100,0000)!
I do need to mention here that we hand-picked these cows from our herd. They are all younger (1st or 2nd lactation) cows too because the older ones are more set in their ways and may take longer to train. After the first week we did end up taking about 10 cows back to the parlor because their udder was just not the right shape for the robot or they were just weren't getting it.
At start-up we had 360 cows to train and since we have been adding 10-20 cows every week. In a few more weeks we will finally be at capacity- 500 cows. What this means is that there are 10-20 cows every week that have needed to be trained. This will be the case too after a cow has her first calf she will need to be trained. It takes about 1 week for the cows to "get it" so until then they need to be ushered to the robots 3 times per day.
Some other firsts this week:
-The first cow to go into the "sick" pen:(
We have a separate pen for cows who need extra attention located right next to the vet office. The vet came to check her out and she's on the road to recovery. Until she is 100% the robot will be dumping her milk.


-We were able to move cows into the heifer and dry (the ones that don't give milk)cow barns at the Robot Dairy today!

This means that the biggest project in the history of SwissLane Farms is wrapping up!
It has been great to work with such good people from our community to bring this dream together.
We want to express true appreciation for:
Kaeb Sales
High Tech Dairy
RA Holmes Construction
Steadfast Construction
Huderman and Son's Redi-Mix Inc
Skyline Electric
Sikkema Equipment
GEA Norb-Co Equipment
Bakker Welding & Mechanics LLC
Timpson Transport
Kyle's Computer Solutions
Huisman Construction
Great Lakes Concrete Pumping
Brink Consulting

It was quite a challenge making sure things stayed on schedule but we couldn't be more thrilled with the focus and professionsalism that each of these businesses brought to the project. And guess what.... we are already talking about Phase 2 of the Robot Dairy!!

Robot Dairy- Week One!

We made it!
Yes, I know its only been one week but you need to celebrate small victories, right?
Actually, the week went amazingly well!
"Better than expected" is what I would like to say but honestly, we had NO idea what to expect!
All we know is that the cows are loving it!
The best indicator is their milk production. If you want to know if a cow is happy, stressed, comfortable, sick, healthy, if she's eating right- you look at how much milk she makes that day. Our cows have been averaging around 85 lbs of milk every day for the last few years.
The average pounds of milk for today at SwissLane 2 (Robot Dairy) was 102 lbs!!

It took about 8 hours to haul all 350 cows from SwissLane 1- only 8 at a time.


This was the first cow milked last Tuesday.


Cows are creatures of habit to the tenth degree. Anything new is such a big deal for them! So, a new barn AND being milked by a ROBOT was a lot for them to take in. We had a crew of 16 people (4 at each robot) for the first day to help usher the cows into the robot to be milked. They were so hesitant!

For the first milking, the Robot had to be trained too!

We had to sanitize the udder

enter the cows ear tag number and steer it so it could find the teats.


The robots scan the cows ear tags so each time she comes in it will remember the shape of her udder and teat placement then it will automatically sanitize and place the milker on the udder. (If you look closely at the picture above you can see the laser on the udder.)
One of the incentives to get the cows into the robot- besides having a full udder- is they get a little treat to eat while being milked. There is a little trough in the robot and it will dump a certain amount of grain in there depending on how much milk she gives and how many times she is milked that day.
Some of them have to be limited on how many times they get milked because they will just come in to have a snack so the robot just kicks them out!


It is just amazing how much information we have access to! We can tell which quarter of the cows udder produces the most or how much she weighs at each milking. We can even track how often a cow is chewing her cud!



High quality milk is the most important thing on our dairy farm. The robot uses a laser to scan the milk to check for inconsistencies and color. If it senses bad quality milk it will dump the milk and alert the herd manager.

It is so fun to watch the cows enjoying their new back rub brushes! Merry Christmas girls!


The most amazing thing that I've seen this week had nothing to do with the robots though....
Over this past week there were 52 people who came to help us with this monumental endeavor. I was overwhelmed by the support from the farming community, our family, and friends. We are so blessed.

A story fit for a farm

This past week we had an older, pre-fresh(or really pregnant) cow that wasn't feeling so good and we just couldn't figure out what the problem was. Our vet gave us some tips on how to treat her symptoms and keep her comfortable and we were kind of relieved when she started to calve in hopes that would turn things around. Little did we know that she was pregnant with TRIPLETS!
My dad claims that since the beginning of Swisslane's existence there have only been 2 cases of triplets before this and none of the calves have survived. I would love to say that this case ended in storybook fashion but it's just a good ending with some farm-life reality too.
All 3 calves were heifers! This is not only rare but great because when cattle have multiples that are different sexes the females are sterile in about 80-90% of cases. These heifers are called a freemartin and raised along with the bull calves.
Sadly, one of the calves didn't make it. As for the other 2, they are happy and healthy. There is just one small flaw with baby #2- she has no ears!



Just these little buds- its very strange-but we still like her! She won't have eartags- everyone will just know her and she's already getting some special treatment as the kids fight over who gets to feed "No Ears" her bottle at night.

The cow did end up passing away 2 days after calving. Her legacy will live on through her girls. And we have another case to support using ultra-sound technology on our pregnant cows- something that we have talked about but just haven't been able to justify that kind of an investment. Its hard to not question "What if...?" But looking at how far technology has advanced cow health it won't be long before cases like this will end happily ever after!